Honeymoon

Hall and I did not get much time for a honeymoon, but knew we wanted to take one. We originally thought the Keys would be great but when it got down to it we had four days, and traveling anywhere over thanksgiving weekend for four days sounded like our worst nightmare. So while in a backpacking store here in Virginia called Blue Ridge Mountain Sports I made the suggestion of going backpacking. 

Why not? We could spend the money we were going to on hotels, etc on great gear, see the area, and then spend the night in Charlottesville, VA when it was all over. 

So on Turkey Day we braved the 40 degree weather and headed into Shenandoah National Park to hike 20 miles of the Appalachian Trail or so we thought! 

Driving up to the trail once in the park a mama black bear and her cub ran in front of the car. We were both shocked and in awe! I have only seen a bear once before while hiking with my family as a kid in the Smokey Mountains. And we were not this close to one. It was great to see them from the safety of the car. They ran into the woods before I could get out the camera. We put on our packs and began our 4.5 mile hike to the nearest shelter. We wanted to make it before dark and had started hiking around 1 in the afternoon. In the national park you can only have an open fire at the shelter and not just camping on the trail. Since we were headed into 20 degree nights I wanted a fire! Unfortunately my husband misjudged the map and we were actually 8.5 miles from the shelter! We booked it on some hard trails but only made it 7.5 miles before we got worried about darkness creeping in. We decided to camp out off the trail. We set up our tents and Hall got the stove out for our thanksgiving feast. The stove was leaking fuel and didn't work so luckily I had brought along beef jerky and trail mix. We sat and ate that from inside the tent then snuggled down for a LONG night. 

We made the executive decision to hike out the next day since we didn't have any food that we could actually eat. We then checked ourselves into the hotel in Charlottesville one day early. Overall it was a fantastic hike. Despite all the hardships.

Charlottesville was great! I loved the town and where we stayed. We went to dinner the first night at a restaurant called Orzo. It was fantastic! www.orzokitchen.com

Hall had the Shenandoah Valley pork chop and I had the red wine braised lamb and it was sooo good. I would highly highly recommend this place to anyone. 

On Saturday we headed up to Monticello to see the home of Thomas Jefferson and it was gorgeous!

Our little honeymoon was perfect. Spain it wasn't, but we had a great time enjoying the area we were in and had the best time spending time together.